Carbon Footprint

I've been thinking about about looking after the environment, and I wonder how my consumption of the earth's resources matches that of parents when they were my age. I guess we are more than them (on account of having more gadgets) but as we try to live simply, I wonder if it is much more?

Google's published carbon footprint caught my eye in this respect. They have taken drastic steps to minimise their impact, which seems to me to be a laudable thing to do.They are employing three simple strategies to do this: saving energy, using green energy and offsetting the carbon they use. I would like to implement these strategies in my life too.

We try to minimise the amount of energy we use by turning things off, using energy efficient lightbulbs, only running one car and cycling where we can. I'm sure there is more we can do, especially with the latter.

We were on a green tariff, but my energy company stopped that ages ago and we've not switched to another yet. To this end, I came across Energy Share and would like to use their services, I just need to get it sorted out.

I haven't offset our energy yet, because I'm not convinced of the value of it, and I'm not sure of the reputability of the companies offering that service.